Many systems today incorporate the function of evaporating a materials as part of a process. As with many systems, the benefits provided by the operation of these systems is often limited or sometimes even outweighed by their prohibitive operation costs due to both equipment costs and energy consumption costs. A prime example of such a limited process is a conventional desalinization system.
One common method for desalinating brine water is distillation. In this process, heat is added to the system where the brine water is introduced until the water vaporizes and leaves behind the brine. The vapor is condensed and the resulting condensation is salt free water. Vaporizing the water consumes large amounts of energy. Many systems utilize compressors, vacuum pumps, heat transfer systems, and heat source devices in efforts to control system pressures and temperatures needed for evaporation to occur. Each of those types of working devices requires either electrical, mechanical, chemical or other energy input to operate. While sources of that energy are numerous, the costs related to reaching proper levels of temperature and pressure have traditionally been great. Other systems that use evaporative processes, for example evaporative cooling systems, suffer similar problems.
Therefore there is a need for a method and apparatus which performs evaporative processes in a more energy efficient manner. For example, there is a well recognized need for a method and apparatus which desalinates brine water into highly pure water in a more energy efficient manner.